obOpenMouth
Well, I'm on the slate to yackity-yack at NordU2002 in Helsinki in February.
I'm gonna talk about Synergy in Open Commercialism or some
such; at any rate, the middle ground between closed/proprietary software
and the militant openness of the GPL.

obOpenSource
Made some progress on Spackle; added the ability to direct
the CVS commit messages to different addresses based on a regex match
of the files/modules changed. There's still a weirdness interacting with
SourceForge's default CVS configuration; there are.. issues.. with a
project that frobs the CVS admin files when the repository is on someone
else's server. :-D

obOpenFire
About the article about ESR.. oh, never mind. :-/

obOpenSoresjacobo, should I tell you about my misadventures with an
automobile battery? Like the one that permanently edited my eyebrows, and
involved an oxyacetylene torch? Or would you rather not know? :-)

obApache
We've selected the management company for our
ApacheCon events and are
working on a contract now. Stay tuned to the
announcement list
if you care..

obSource
At the urging of someone over on the Jikes (not
here on Advogato, I don't think) I finally got around to
creating
a SourceForge project for the CVSROOT enhancements I've been
making. The project is called Spackle, for
'CVS ACLs'
-- sideways. Sort of. SourceForge rejected the initial
project
request within hours, but it took several days for them to
get
around to telling me why. In fact, they never did -- they
just
reviewed the additional info I put in my 'why?' request and
determined they had enough to approve the project -- which
they did.

State of the Union
I'm keeping my thoughts about the U.S. President's address
to myself -- except to not that he didn't inventalise any
words during it.

yack! and Phoon
How about yak? Multi-leveled, as in your original
'hurl', and also a take-off on 'gnu'. (Note: I do
not think the meanings are related at all!)

Uh, duh..
I was going to mention something hackish, but I forget
what it was. D'oh!

To _(), perchance to gettext()..
Some of the language purists over in PHP-land have just
discovered to their horror that _() is in PHP (and
has been since 3.0.7) as an alias for gettext().
And
whether it makes the language leper-outcast-unclean is
in debate. I threw in my 0.02 Euro (hey, the chocolate
coins last Winter were Euros!) but I do not think it will
make any difference. I have little to no patience with
elegance in place of useability.. particularly when
sacrificing
the latter for the former, even eventually, will break
existing
users and applications.. So I am not popular; what else is
gnu? :-)

Virtual monkeyshines
When my new laptop arrives I am going to try running Linux
as the base system with VMware to get W2K as well. If that
will not work, I will reverse the order -- but I would
prefer the
first option. I would almost rather have a separate Windows
laptop (as I do now) than to subjugate Linux under Windows..

Happiness is geek toys
Only about one week left before my new laptop is supposed to arrive: a ThinkPad T21,
20GB, DVD. I took advantage of a special 'double the base memory for free'
offer; the base memory was 128MB, and I ordered an additional 256MB, so now the
total is 512MB. Unfortunately, there are only two memory slots, and apparently I am
going to receive one 256MB DIMM and two 128MB DIMMs. Anyone want to trade
a 256MB for two 128MBs? :-)

writing
Making excellent progress on my
Apache Module Development in C
book. Funny thing; it was going very slowly when
I was working on it with rbb, but when
he got fed up with the slow pace and dropped out, I got motivated.
I guess I am just not a good collaborator when it comes to writing..

Progress is also being made on my
Apache Cookbook
(for O'Reilly), but it is slow. Every time I think I have a handle on everything
I want to include on a particular topic, two or three more crop up. I need to
put a stake in the ground, before Nat (my editor) puts one in my heart..

Some people...
Just a verbum sapienti: I personally highly recommend against ever
trying to have any sort of relationship with Remote Communications, Inc. other than as a user of their products (such as mod_gzip).
I am speaking personally, and not wearing any hat except that and my Apache (and open-source)
developer beanie.

Why do I bother posting this? Primarily because I want to set the record straight before
someone tries to cockeye it. Secondarily, so that other developers may not have to undergo
the same crap I did in coming to these conclusions.

My Software Livre trip report..
..is now online.
In other news: the Apache Software Foundation is looking for a new conference
producer (see the RFP);
I did a poor hack on mutt; I have started working
on Versionary (more later); I have a bunch of cool ideas for Apache modules;
and my health has taken a hit.

Rio Grande do Sul on fire
Pôrto Alegre is currently hosting the Software Livre
2001
conference, and it is bubbling with fervour about open/free
software.
Maybe two thousand people here.. possibly a trip report
later. The State now mandates that governmental software
solutions must be open ones.
Very cool!

long time no Advogato
Back again.. In the time since my last posting the main
accomplishment was ApacheCon 2001 in Santa Clara, California, USA.
maddog Hall and David Brin are excellent keynoters, btw.

advances into autotooling
I finally got around to making some enhancments to
autoresponder and mklicence -- namely,
wrapping them with an autoconf ./configure script to look
for prerequisites and install them in the right places.
Slimy yet satisfying.

No other news at this point, although I am assembling the
CONSUMERMAN Files, writing four articles, two books, and
editing another. Busy busy busy..

rpm nirvana
Right, so I managed to put together OpenSSH RPMs for RH
6.2 and 5.2, and upgrade almost all of my servers
appropriately --
including the Tru64 ones. Now, when I get my RH Alpha-Linux
CDs I can see about making RPMs for it too. Not a lot else
accomplished this week-end.

rpm hell
Aside from various things with book reviewing, book writing, and conference planning, I have
been hacking at building RH Linux RPMs for OpenSSH. There are doubtless already some
out there already, but count this as a learning exercise in the black art of RPM construction.

Lots of stuff currently on the back burner; updates due when progress is made. In the
meantime, everyone should register for ApacheCon 2001. :-)